Amsterdam

ayout is an app from Instagram, unveiled back in May, which is designed to allow users to easily arrange multiple photographs into a single square picture frame. When Layout opens, users are shown their camera roll, and can immediately begin assembling their photographs into preset layouts, placing from two to four photos alongside each other in an array of preordained…

A disparate collection of photographs here, taken in different places over a period of several months, less a series than a frayed string. There are sixteen in all: the first a group of atmospheric late-evening shots taken on the water of Norra Renbergsvattnet, near Skellefteå in the north of Sweden; then a couple of lazing cats, a hanging strawberry plant, and Amsterdam…

I lived in Amsterdam between the autumn of 2012 and the autumn of 2013, with an apartment in the Oud-Zuid neighbourhood; and have visited the city on several occasions, most recently last week. During my year in Amsterdam, I maintained an almost-daily blog at amsterdamarm.com, featuring photography, concert guides, exhibition and restaurant reviews, festival and event information, Dutch recipes, the…

Ons Buiten (literally ‘Our Outside’) is the name for a collective of garden parks across the Netherlands, whose Amsterdam branch is on the southern outskirts of the city: situated along the northern edge of the Nieuwe Meer, opposite the Amsterdamse Bos which progresses down into Amstelveen. It is a collection of cottages and allotments, which allow members to spend the…

Prinsengracht is the outer canal, and therefore the longest, of the four major canals which together comprise Amsterdam’s canal belt. Its northwesterly section passes by Westerkerk, Amsterdam’s famous Dutch Protestant church, designed by the sculptor and architect Hendrick de Keyser and completed in 1631; and by the Anne Frank House, on the canal front round the corner. Just beyond these stands…

And so here lies a second painting, in ink and watercolour, of the view from the rear balcony of my old apartment in the Oud-Zuid neighbourhood of Amsterdam. While the first looked down from the balcony toward two sheds, showing their roofs and yards in autumn with the patternation of fallen leaves, this watercolour shows a perspective across the complex…

At the end of last October, my partner and I departed Amsterdam and returned to York. The cause was my commencing a PhD in literature at the University of York. While there were possibilities for undertaking doctoral research at a university which would have enabled us to continue living in Amsterdam – including an excellent opportunity with the University of…

There has been something of a surge of interest in Lebanese cooking over the past several years. Perhaps this would demonstrate itself most profoundly and convincingly in a growing number of people gorging themselves on Lebanese food – however, I possess neither the statistics, nor the conviction, nor sufficient photographic evidence of lips covered in hummus, to assert that this…

The following fifteen photographs were taken in Amsterdam between April and early May. A number of them feature the water and those streets around the top of the Amstel, including Staalstraat, and a view from Groenburgwal towards Zuiderkerk – the church where Rembrandt buried three of his children; and which was painted by Monet on a visit to Amsterdam in 1874….